Report highlights how FS Energy’s innovative disclosure and rating initiatives are helping to create jobs and reduce energy use and costs.

FS Energy, LLC, a leading independent provider of comprehensive energy solutions for multi-family residential properties, and a subsidiary of FirstService Corporation [NASDAQ: FSRV; TSX: FSV and FSV.PR.U], announced today that it has been featured as a pioneering business in a new report on energy disclosure and job creation by the Institute for Market Transformation (IMT), a nonprofit in Washington, DC. The report, Energy Disclosure and the New Frontier for American Jobs, profiles business leaders in the emerging field of building energy management who are adding jobs and expanding their client rosters.

The report shows how a new kind of energy policy is creating skilled, export-proof jobs in cities across the U.S. Under this type of policy, called building energy rating and disclosure, owners of large buildings track exactly how much energy their properties are using. Armed with this information, they can make changes that reduce both their utility bills and those of their tenants and residents— a win-win situation for all.

“The secrets to our success include benchmarking and transparency,” says David Diestel, senior vice president of operations for FirstService Residential Management. Last year, before New York City’s Local Law 84 Benchmarking law took effect, FS Energy developed its own energy scorecard, known as the Building Energy Rating Guide (BERG), and applied it to over 400 of FirstService’s managed properties in New York City.

“Before we issued scorecards, our clients were not motivated to implement efficiency improvements,” Diestel explains. “Yet as clients began to understand how their buildings were performing relative to other properties,

the demand for efficiency improvements began to skyrocket, and continues to rise today.” In addition, an innovative financing package offered by FS Energy, in which clients pay for energy efficiency upgrades through utility bill savings, helped spur the transformation.

Growing from fewer than 10 retrofit projects completed in 2009, FS Energy currently has 30 retrofit projects in progress and expects to have another dozen completed by year-end. These projects will help clients reduce their energy costs by millions of dollars and shrink their carbon output by tens of thousands of metric tons.

Five cities and two states have already adopted similar energy disclosure policies. IMT research has found that implementation of a comparable national energy policy would add 23,000 net new jobs in 2015 and 59,000 jobs in 2020.

According to David Kuperberg, CEO of FS Energy, making a building’s energy use transparent through grades posted online or shared in real estate transactions, is comparable to affixing an MPG sticker to its façade. As a result, consumers can shop for office space or a new apartment with an eye towards their future utility costs. In turn, this will motivate owners to make their buildings more efficient, creating demand for specialists who can work with property owners to reduce energy use.

The report, Energy Disclosure and the New Frontier for American Jobs, is available at www.imt.org.